Never been a big fan of vegan diets - especially in people that are endurance athletes. All of my patients that were vegan endurance runners or triathletes, of which I only had a few, all ended up with bad shatter type fractures of their lower extremities that required surgery. The bulk of them were in their forties and had been vegans for well over 10 years - a few of them over 20 years. There were about half of them that I managed to convince that eating some clean animal protein would help in their recovery. Since the other nutritional tips I had given them had bore fruit with regard to their performance, they took my advice. I often wonder if I had managed to convince them to get some clean animal protein onboard sooner whether they could have avoided the severity of the injuries. The others refused my advice and continued with their vegan diets. It was a small cohort, but I noted that those who did eat some types of clean animal protein seemed to heal faster and had less strength issues in the injured tissues than those that remained on a solely plant based diet. However, none of them were ever able to return to competitive sports and all had lingering challenges.

This is not to say that there are not people that can follow a strict vegan diet and manage to stay healthy. But, I never saw any in my practice. My clinical experience indicated to me that the vegans I treated were not any healthier than the those that were not vegans; The difference was in the types of chronic ailments they suffered from and how old they were when they started to have problems. They did not by in large suffer from the same conditions associated with weight as those that consumed animal proteins - like diabetes. However, they did seem to suffer more from wasting types of conditions such as muscle and bone loss more associated with frail older adults. Instead of frailty at 80, they were suffering with it at 45. There needs to be balance in everything and eating organic clean foods is absolutely key - vegan or not.

Never been a big fan of vegan diets - especially in people that are endurance athletes. All of my patients that were vegan endurance runners or triathletes, of which I only had a few, all ended up with bad shatter type fractures of their lower extremities that required surgery. The bulk of them were in their forties and had been vegans for well over 10 years - a few of them over 20 years. There were about half of them that I managed to convince that eating some clean animal protein would help in their recovery. Since the other nutritional tips I had given them had bore fruit with regard to their performance, they took my advice. I often wonder if I had managed to convince them to get some clean animal protein onboard sooner whether they could have avoided the severity of the injuries. The others refused my advice and continued with their vegan diets. It was a small cohort, but I noted that those who did eat some types of clean animal protein seemed to heal faster and had less strength issues in the injured tissues than those that remained on a solely plant based diet. However, none of them were ever able to return to competitive sports and all had lingering challenges.

This is not to say that there are not people that can follow a strict vegan diet and manage to stay healthy. But, I never saw any in my practice. My clinical experience indicated to me that the vegans I treated were not any healthier than the those that were not vegans; The difference was in the types of chronic ailments they suffered from and how old they were when they started to have problems. They did not by in large suffer from the same conditions associated with weight as those that consumed animal proteins - like diabetes. However, they did seem to suffer from wasting types of conditions such as muscle and bone loss more associated with frail older adults. Instead of frailty at 80, they were suffering with it at 45. There needs to be balance in everything and eating organic clean foods is absolutely key - vegan or not.